One Escape
By Joan Leotta
Likely my great-great and more grandmother
was peacefully watching her grazing sheep
with her sister, cousins, and friends, when
quiet mountain afternoon became hell as
Roman legionnaires leapt out from behind
rocks, slung the women over their shoulders
carried them down the steep hills
into rough camps these sons of Romulus
tying them to posts until all could go to Rome.
Moaning and crying, her sisters, cousins, friends
called out for their fathers, brothers, uncles
to come and rescue them.
Not my grandmother. She challenged
her sisters to leave with her,
“we can secure our own escape.”
When at last the fire’s embers burned small
and the legionnaires laid on the ground
in stupor from drink and brawls,
Grandma wriggled out of the fetters
on her slender wrist,
disappeared into the forest,
up the mountain.
Her bare feet knew the rocky pathways
Her sheep bleated, ran with her.
She climbed until at last
she came to a small Sabine village
and eventually married a man of her choice.
Those others who stayed, made sons for Rome.
Eons later, Grandma’s son
descended the mountain, crossed the sea,
married a Calabrian woman; fathered me.
